Patricia Highsmith - Definition and Overview

Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 - February 4, 1995) was an American novelist who is known mainly for her psychological crime thrillers. She acquired world renown for Strangers on a Train, which has been adapted to the screen a number of times, most famously by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951.

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, she spent most of her life living in France and Switzerland, and was long widely appreciated in Europe while suffering relative obscurity in the United States. A bisexual, she included homosexual overtones in many of her novels, and her lesbian novel The Price of Salt—rejected by her publishers—was published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan in 1953 and sold almost a million copies.

Her recurring character Tom Ripley, a morally ambiguous bisexual thief and occasional murderer, was first introduced in The Talented Mr. Ripley. This was filmed by René Clément in 1960 as Plein Soleil (Purple Noon), starring Alain Delon. It was also adapted under its original title as a 1999 film by Anthony Minghella, starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Cate Blanchett. A later Ripley novel, Ripley's Game, inspired Wim Wenders' 1977 film The American Friend and was filmed again in 2002 as Ripley's Game, starring John Malkovitch and directed by Liliana Cavani.

Selected bibliography

• Strangers on a Train (1950)
• The Price of Salt (as Claire Morgan) (1953)
• The Blunderer (1954)
• The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
• Deep Water (1957)
• This Sweet Sickness (1961)
• Ripley Under Ground (1970)
• Ripley's Game (1974)
• Edith's Diary (1977)
• The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)
• Ripley Underwater (1991)

External link

• detective fiction website (http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/) Highsmith bibliography